Editorial: The day the schools closed down

It was supposed to be just 10 days.

That was where it all started March 13, 2020.

School superintendents across Pennsylvania had met in a teleconference with then-state Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera that morning about how to move forward as the coronavirus pandemic was going from something happening in other countries an ocean or two away to something that was closer to home. As February turned into March, everyone had watched the new, scary disease creep closer and closer. As it started to find footholds in the Keystone State, schools were wondering what to do.

That Friday the 13th — a day synonymous with bad luck — is when everything about the pandemic crystallized.

It was a desperate search for guidance. The school districts were confused. Should they send kids home? Were they safer in class? Were tests still important? What about hitting that 180-day mark for school days?

It was a veering from one plan to another. During that meeting with Rivera, superintendents were told to make their own decisions, which the state would support. A few hours later, those remarks were torn into confetti as Gov. Tom Wolf issued a new statement, closing schools to cut down on transmission.

It was about shifting timelines. Ten days would be reevaluated, Wolf said. It was. The finish line was pushed back. April became May and then became the rest of the school year. Then it was recommendations for the fall, when the ball was back in district control — with lots of “recommendations” and little state responsibility.

It was simultaneously a decisive move and a counterproductive one. Could it limit the disease? Yes. Would it have been a better plan hours earlier when schools could have made sure kids got on their buses with everything they would need for the coming weeks? Absolutely.

It was a beginning. Just three days later, Wolf would shut down nonessential businesses, starting months of shutdowns.

It also was the end. Nothing has really been the same since.

A year later, March 13 is less about closing doors than opening them. With the vaccines being approved and administered and positive case counts falling to numbers unseen since fall, hope for a return to a world without social distancing and regular reports of death rates seems, if not here, then not far away.

It’s amazing what we learned when the schools shut down.